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I decided to take advantage of a service offered through my work: Mindwell-U’s “30-Day Mindfulness Challenge.” It is based on the idea of “Tak[ing] 5” (details here): https://www.mindwellu.com/take-5 and each day I need to watch a short video and do mini-reflections (in addition to taking 5 at least once… ideally 5 times or more). I participated in the challenge from March 3 to April 1, 2020. By the end of the 30 days, I would’ve taken 5 approximately 90 times (roughly 3 times a day). I started the 30-day mindfulness challenge at a very unique time (when COVID-19 turned into a global pandemic), and so my conclusion as to whether the mindfulness challenge worked is somewhat wishy-washy: I’m feeling uneasy overall, but I might be feeling way worse if I didn’t do the mindfulness exercises every day. Action items for the future (which may or may not evolve into my next DK30, we’ll see):
Some reflections on the 30-Day Mindfulness Challenge at large:
 
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I thought I'd write some thoughts on the DayKnight 30-day Project Challenge (DK30). After 30 days, I made 5 illustrations (which exceeds my minimum goal of 4).
This was my first DK30, and I think it was a success. Overall, I was able to predict that I will produce somewhere between 4 and 6 illustrations based on the target days I planned to spend each week. But I dramatically underestimated how many hours I would spend PER TARGET DAY. I probably spent 2x-3x as much time to complete an illustration because I would deviate from the initial draft so much. In weeks 3 and 4 my attention was split between two projects (I got invited into helping out on a different DK30 project) so that was an additional challenge. Most importantly though, the illustrations did seem to bring back memories for the DayKnights who watched the source videos and/or streams, and did pique interest of the DayKnights who haven't watched Day[9]'s musings. And last but not least... Day[9] himself saw my illustrations WOOHOOOOO!!! (huge fan moment haha) (Originally posted on the DK30 project page) The final illustration for the Winter 2020 Day Knight 30-Project Challenge is from "Emotions as Kittens and Ninja-stars."  How many "kittens" and "ninja-stars" do you encounter every day? I think I'm probably a half-and-half person, but I used to feel like I had way more ninja-stars because I wasn't acknowledging the kittens enough. So these days, while attempting to dodge the ninja-stars, I am making a point of REALLY petting the kittens when they do appear. And I think it is working.
(Originally posted on the DK30 project page) "Anxiety" was a topic that hit very close to home so I decided to draw it as a tribute. Making this turned out to be more challenging than expected - after finishing my initial draft, my final design ended up deviating quite a lot from it so it took an extra day for me to complete. It took a while for me to settle on how to visualize the ruminating thoughts (in the form of thought bubbles that look like dark clouds). I am satisfied with how it turned out - especially when the thoughts turn into more vicious ones and become spiky and explode-y.  (Originally posted on the DK30 project page) Second drawing for week 2, featuring a clip from "Being Relentlessly Positive." Ruminating negative thoughts is a bad habit of mine, and most of the time... simply turning my attention to someone else and focusing on helping them out is all I need to get out of my own head.  (Originally posted on the DK30 project page) The Day[9] Daily #100 is one of the videos I keep coming back to when I feel down/angry at myself. I decided to draw one very valuable lesson I learned from there which also coincided with a big chunk of my undergraduate studies (biopsychology). I had forgotten how much I loved drawing neurons, synapses and other brain-y things!! Brings back happy memories from university.  (Originally posted on the DK30 project page) Whew, managed to make one on the first target date (1/25)! I have enormously underestimated how much time this would take haha. Instead of spending a few hours (2-3) I spent probably twice as much or more (6-ish). Since the content was dense, it took me about 20 minutes to consolidate, a few hours to make a rough draft, and another few hours to do the final draft. "What are one's needs as a person?" was one of the videos that permanently changed my everyday behavior for the better. So I thought I'd feature this one as a token of thanks :)  I'm debuting as a DayKnight and I'm PROUD of it! What is a DayKnight? Individuals who are part of the Day[9] community are called DayKnights. Who is Day[9]? I can pull up a quick blurb from Wikipedia: "["Day[9]" or Sean Plott] is an American esports commentator, player, event host, and game designer. Plott is best known for his contributions in the professional StarCraft scene, where he regularly appeared first as a player and later as a commentator and host at various tournaments for the game for many years." ...but for me, nothing can explain who Day[9] is better than himself. Several years ago a good friend of mine showed me this video of Day[9] sharing his experiences growing up with StarCraft and to me this captures his identity. Also I will mention that the video is 2 hours long but it was one of the best 2 hours I've spent in my life. This man is a master of storytelling so you get to live his life vicariously - it's incredible how much I laughed, teared up, and learned how to be a better person in ONLY 2 hours.
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